Into the Mystic of Los Tuxtlas...

Into the Mystic of Los Tuxtlas...

David L. Biller

SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2012 AT 11:29PM

When I told the editor of National Geographic en Español that I was going to explore the Los Tuxtlas region of Veracruz state over the holidays with my brother, Anson, he asked me to dig around in the small city of Catemaco. He had always been interested in publishing a story on Catemaco’s famed witchcraft, but wasn’t sure there was one to be told; the abundance of stories in Mexican publications touting the witch’s abilities were always one-sided and, frankly, very uninteresting.

So I set about researching witchcraft in a Mexico City library; an important introduction, among other sources, was “La Magia en Los Tuxtlas” (The Magic in Los Tuxtlas) by Marcela Olavarrieta. Anson and I headed for Catemaco on December 31, and arrived just before midnight. We walked straight into our first mystical custom: “quemando el viejo.” (burning the old man).  Catemaco’s residents had made effigies filled with hay, newspaper, sawdust and fireworks, and were spraying them with lighter fluid then lighting them afire. The rite serves to do away with the past year, and start anew with a blank slate. Children no more than five years old lit fireworks and threw them at us. The streets were filled with smoke, thorough which we could see the flaming body after flaming body between the one-story houses. We escaped to the malecon (boardwalk), where the trees’ branches were filled with hundreds of birds and it smelled strongly of guano. Bats were wheeling across the lake’s surface.....

An absolutely MUST read:

http://davidbiller.com/on-assignment/into-the-mystic-of-los-tuxtlas.html

OT

One of my favorite reads on the intrernet about Mexico, the Mexfile, disappeared a few months ago, supposedly because of selling out to a Dutch weasel promising to put the "real" Mexico on the internet.

The poor guy apparently starved. Although he supposedly has 2 left arms, he provided some of the most interesting facets of Mexican history, and on occasion, concise interpretation of its current condition.

Apparently, he is now sneaking back:
If you are not just a snowbird or are living cheaper in Mexico than in  the US kind of person; Do a  "Me Gusta" (I like), on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mexican-History-Historia-Mexicana/163458783758558

The photo is of Fidel Castro's boat "Grama" leaving from Tampico, Veracruz for Cuba. If the author was here during that time, they apparently ditched him.

Update: the Mexfile is back

YAHOO SUCKS

I have been using the software of  Yahoo Sitebuilder to program the website of catemaco.info since 2005. 

Unannounced, four days ago, Yahoo changed its limits on my web hosting plan, and I was unable to upload changes because of a supposed lack of storage capacity. I upgraded to their unlimited plan and since then I have spent about 18 hours on the phone with tech reps in India trying to upload changes to my site.

Incredibly, that bunch of incompetents now advises me that the only solution to my problem is to restructure my 700 pages and reload them.

Instead I will switch to Dreamweaver, Coffee Cup, or maybe Wordpress to redesign my website which took me 6 years to build.

So for the next year, expect www.catemaco.info to be a mess while this old dog learns a few new tricks.

Meanwhile here is my heartfelt message to the powers that be:

"CHINGA TU MADRE; YAHOO!!!.

Catemaco Homshuk

Catemaco actually has a Harvard graduate.

It's most famous former resident, supposedly from Tenaspi Island in the Catemaco lake apparently disappeared from Catemaco and turned up at Harvard University. From there he reappeared at the Anthropology Museum in Xalapa, Veracruz.

Clicking on the photo or link, which will take you to a nice fable about the small statue, supposedly of the Popoluca god "Homshuk", first identified by Frans Blom in 1925 in Catemaco.

Laguna de Catemaco and the Homshuk Legend

Catemaco and the Four Winds

In 1933, the somnolent village of Catemaco first made international headlines.

On the 10th of June 1933, two Spanish airmen set off from Spain for Cuba to fly 40 hours in the first successful  non stop crossing of the central Atlantic in a single engine aircraft.

Early morning on June 20th the plane left Cuba for Mexico City, where 60 000 celebrants eagerly awaited the plane`s arrival.

Curiously, the flight was only planned to Villa Hermosa in the neighboring state of Tabasco, where it never landed. From there, the Four Winds (Cuatro Vientos in Spanish) disappeared into the haze of mystery.

The Mexican Air Force immediately dispatched a squadron of search and rescue planes, one of which later made an emergency landing in nearby San Andrés Tuxtla and provided Los Tuxtlas with the thrill of its first aviation experience.

The flight of the Cuatro Vientos was the equivalent of the Lindbergh experience in the Latin world and received huge press and radio coverage.

After the unsuccessful air search, hampered by bad weather, the then Mexican president,  presuming the crash occurred in Los Tuxtlas, ordered an expeditionary force to begin a ground search. The operations center was to be Catemaco, and the sleepy village became inundated with  reporters and searchers, depleting the shelves of its few grocery stores.

Locals guided the unsuccessful searchers through the surrounding jungles, where two died of snake bites and many more came down with tropical diseases.

The fate of the aircraft and its crew has never been officially explained. The most popular story claims the aviators crashed in the nearby Mazateca region of the Oaxaca mountains and were then killed and buried by natives. In 2008 a Mexican colonel reported it actually crashed in Veracruz mountains north of Los Tuxtlas.
Conspiracy buffs of course believe the Mexican government buried the facts to avoid international embarrassment.

Catemaco had gotten its first taste of flying, and soon an airfield was leveled near the El Cerrito hill which is now the center of the town. Nearby San Andrès actually operated an airfield with scheduled flights to a number of cities. All that ended coincident with an airliner flying into a mountain in the 1950's.

Both airfields have disappeared. A dirt strip outside of San Andrés receives an occasional aircraft and for years now, Los Tuxtlas is humming with political promises of a new airport to be built.


Read about the history of the flight, in Spanish, of course:
http://historiasindelebles.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/chilchotla-esconde-un-secreto-el-final-del-cuatro-vientos/

Catemaco Beaches

Well, these two really are not in Catemaco, but  few people know  that they are in San Andrès Tuxtla, the largest burg in Los Tuxtlas.

I stopped publishing English stories in catemaco.info a year ago.  This one is a temporary rarity, because it is still awaiting translation to Spanish. I am mentioning it here, because it has 2 nice videos.

Visita a Montepío y Balzapote